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RackMonkey 1.2.4 Upgrade Instructions

RackMonkey 1.2.4 Documentation Index

RackMonkey Version 1.2.4
©2004-2008 Will Green (wgreen at users.sourceforge.net)
Licensed under the GNU Public Licence v2.

Upgrading RackMonkey

RackMonkey v1.2.x can be upgraded to the latest version following the instructions below. NB. Upgrading from v1.1 is not supported.

Upgrading from earlier releases of v1.2 is straightforward: there are no database schema changes (but see note about Postgres/MySQL Schema, below). However, there has been a change in the way configuration is stored, which is explained in the instructions below.

Despite the fact there are no schema changes in this release, you should take a backup of the RackMonkey database before proceeding. For SQLite this can be achieved by copying the database file, for Postgres use pg_dump.

Please note that the $ or # shown at the start of commands represents the shell prompt, you should not type it.

Postgres/MySQL Schema

The Postgres and MySQL schemas has been tweaked in v1.2.4 to prevent NULL values being stored in columns which are foreign key constraints. You do not need to update your existing schema, as this change doesn't affect the functionality of RackMonkey (it improves the integrity of data in the case of manual access or bugs in RackMonkey). If you wish to upgrade your schema to the new version, dump your database and create a new database with the new schema, then import your data. In a later release there will be a process for updating the schema automatically.

Rackmonkey Files

Once you have obtained a copy of RackMonkey (see README) you should have a directory with the following layout:

Creating a v1.2.4 Configuration

RackMonkey now uses a text file to store configuration information, such as the database to use. Before upgrading you should take a backup of RackMonkey/Conf.pm as this file is totally replaced with a new module. You should now copy conf/rackmonkey.conf-default to conf/rackmonkey.conf then use your existing RackMonky/Conf.pm module to fill in the values.

Comments in the configuration file are included with the a #. Comments must either start a line or be preceded by whitespace. Values in the configuration file cannot include spaces and configuration variables are lower case:

By default this file is read from /etc/rackmonkey.conf, if you're happy to put it there, simply copy your conf/rackmonkey.conf to /etc/rackmonkey.conf. If you want to put this file in a different location you need to tell RackMonkey where to look by using an environment variable. If you're using Apache you should do this by adding the following line to your httpd.conf:

SetEnv RACKMONKEY_CONF /<path>/rackmonkey.conf

Replacing <path> with wherever you put the rackmonkey.conf. You should then get apache to reload its configuration.

On Debian and Ubuntu:

# /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

On Red Hat based Linux systems (including CentOS and RHEL):

# service httpd reload

On Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard):

$ sudo apachectl graceful

On NetBSD:

# /etc/rc.d/apache reload

On other systems kill -HUP apache_pid> will do the trick.

You're now ready to upgrade your install.

Performing the Upgrade

NB. If running RackMonkey under mod_perl you must restart or HUP your mod_perl instance. This ensures mod_perl reads the new modules.

The upgrade is now complete and the updated RackMonkey is ready to use. If you experience any problems with the upgrade you should consult troubleshooting.txt.

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